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About Todd Weir

NBN Episodes hosted by Todd:

Intellectual History February 3, 2016

Atheist Secularism and its Discontents

A Study of Religion and Communism in Eurasia

Tam Ngo and Justine B. Quijada, eds.

Hosted by Todd Weir
Secularism has emerged as a central category of twenty-first century political thought and critical theory. Following the lead of anthropologist Talal Asad, there is a growing literature that traces the …
Intellectual History December 11, 2015

The Past as History

National Identity and Historical Consciousness in Modern Europe

Stefan Berger

Hosted by Todd Weir
A historiographical paradigm opened in the late 1970s with groundbreaking works on nationalism. To a large extent these were constructivist interpretations, which drew heavily on literary criticism. Since then it …
Intellectual History November 18, 2014

Sex, Freedom and Power in Imperial Germany 1880-1914

Edward Ross Dickinson

Hosted by Todd Weir
In this interview with historian Edward Ross Dickinson we talk about sex. Well, actually we talk about the talk about sex. Since Michel Foucault's epochal work History of Sexuality (1976) …
Science, Technology, and Society October 30, 2014

The Romantic Machine

Utopian Science and Technology after Napoleon

John Tresch

Hosted by Todd Weir
After the Second World War, the Hungarian Marxist Georg Lukacs described National Socialism as a triumph of irrationalism and a "destruction of reason." It has since become commonplace to interpret …
Intellectual History September 26, 2014

The Third Reich Sourcebook

Anson Rabinbach and Sander Gilman, eds.

Hosted by Todd Weir
Primary source readers represent an unusual historical genre. Unlike editions, their aim is not to enable the reader to hear, as clearly as possible, the voice of a single historical …
Intellectual History July 15, 2014

The Modernity of Others

Jewish Anti-Catholicism in Germany and France

Ari Joskowicz

Hosted by Todd Weir
In 1873, the German scientist Rudolf Virchow declared in Parliament that liberals were locked in a Kulturkampf, a "culture war" with the forces of Catholicism, which he viewed as the …
Intellectual History March 28, 2014

Empire and Underworld

Captivity in French Guiana

Miranda Spieler

Hosted by Todd Weir
In Empire and Underworld: Captivity in French Guiana (Harvard University Press, 2012), historian Miranda Spieler tells of the transformation of a slave plantation colony into a destination for metropolitan convicts …
Intellectual History February 14, 2014

The Philosophy of Life and Death

Ludwig Klages and the Rise of a Nazi Biopolitics

Nitzan Lebovic

Hosted by Todd Weir
Thomas Mann referred to Ludwig Klages (1872-1956) as a "criminal philosopher," a "Pan-Germanist," "an irrationalist," a "Tarzan philosopher," "a cultural pessimist... the voice of the world's downfall." Yet, Walter Benjamin …
Intellectual History January 30, 2014

Adam's Ancestors

Race, Religion, and the Politics of Human Origins

David N. Livingstone

Hosted by Todd Weir
A report to the General Assembly of Scottish Presbyterians of 1923 contains the following passage: "God placed the people of this world in families, and history which is the narrative …
Intellectual History January 14, 2014

The Last Utopia

Human Rights in History

Samuel Moyn

Hosted by Todd Weir
The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Harvard University Press 2010) takes the reader on a sweeping journey through the history of international law from the ancient world to the …
Intellectual History December 12, 2013

Socialism and Religion

Roads to Common Wealth

Vincent Geoghegan

Hosted by Todd Weir
"Christianity and socialism go together like fire and water," remarked August Bebel, Germany's leading socialist, in 1874. The anticlerical violence of revolutions in Mexico, Russia, and Spain in the early …